Actual Human Poo

Funny thing about having children: it provides a crash course in crap.  Literal crap.

(Warning: appetite spoilers follow.)

Babies who nurse produce a mild, yellow excrement redolent of Grey Poupon (no pun intended).  Oddly enough, the end product smells a tad like movie theater popcorn.  Probably, that results from milk having been exposed to acid, with remnant undigested fats rounding out the buttery bouquet.  (Of course, individual results may vary.)

Anyway, changing many much diapers enlightens one some.  Brings one down to earth.  Closer to the soil, anyway.  As a friend once said: today's dessert becomes tomorrow's poop.  True enough... and very Zen.   Circle of life, or something.  Now the wee one has begun eating solid food.

With the entrance of solid foods comes the exit of a different kind of excrement: a whole new number two, if you will.  Solid food brings a revolution to intestinal flora and a completely new set of metabolic by-products (occasionally including whole, undigested vegetables... mmm.)  Not the cute little baby poop anymore.  With the recent addition of meats and fish to his diet, diapers arrive brimming with the real McCoy: actual human poo.

The little shits grow up so fast.

Food Flakes for the Ego Fish.

The end of another school year has come.

Students fill out a questionnaire in the final class (an independent one: not mandated by the institution).  It has a number of questions regarding what the student feels they can or can't do (e.g. "I can introduce myself in English").  The same questions appear on the questionnaire distributed at the beginning of the year.  Those same papers go back to the students after they fill out the year-end ones so they can compare their answers.  It serves as a very tangible benchmark for improvement.  Such "can-do" lists have gained much popularity in language-learning circles.

The final questionnaire also includes open-ended questions regarding what they liked about the class, what they didn't like about the class, and any general comments they have.  The questionnaires have the students' names on them.  The lack of anonymity may curtail some honesty.  However, the answers seem relatively frank to the untrained eye.  Students regularly report things they didn't like.

Reading the answers to the "what did you like about the class" section of the questionnaire invariably serves as food flakes for the ego fish.  The students make such heartwarming comments about what they enjoyed.  Do the children just say what they believe the teacher wants to hear?  Dunno.  Is it all just sunshine for the bum?  Probably.  That doesn't diminish the warm fuzzies it generates.

The students make these comments even before they get the parting gifts for the class: souvenir bags with hand-drawn radish people doing adorable shit (among other things).  Gotta love kids.

Rubber Baby Rugby Bumpers

Balancing childcare and work always presents a challenge... even when one lives in a culture conducive to childrearing.  In some ways, Japan's culture facilitates childcare.  In others, it does not.  In recent years, the birthrate in Japan has been falling steadily.

Japan boasts low-cost, public day-care.  However, there exist waiting lists and an elaborate point system for potential attendees.  Resistance from nimby neigbors who regard daycares as a noisy nuisance stalls the construction of new facilities that might alleviate the burden on extant centers.  And the birthrate falls.

Japan still suffers from a chronic expectation that new mothers will quit working and stay home for all time (i.e. give up their lives).  Company policies, written and unwritten, encourage this.  Friends, family, and society at large place enormous pressure on women to fall in line with this malarkey.  In a culture where one's nakama (仲間）attain virtual godhood in one's life, peer pressure and social ostracism can compel comparable to the threat of violence.  Yet, oddly enough, the birth rate continues to fall.

National insurance in Japan affordably covers many, many things.  However, it doesn't cover the uncomplicated delivery of a baby.  Prenatal care, yes.  A cesarian section, yes.  Neonatal care, yes.  Children's healthcare in general, yes.  Just not the delivery.  Also, many hospitals don't offer epidurals or other pain-management for pregnant women.  It seems female suffering (avoidable or otherwise) receives a full endorsement from this patriarchal society.  It expects women to give up career and selfhood, bear children in Old-Testamenty pain, and struggle with the availability of daycare services.  The birthrate continues to fall... and some people actually have the wherewithal to wonder "why?" aloud in public forums.

On another note, most other teachers at work put in absurd hours doing much administrative paperwork of little observable worth.  They devalue an erstwhile rewarding education career into depressing wage slavery.  Some of these "fathers" rarely see their children.  Can't play that game.  Forget it.  Anyway, for a foreign employee, advancing up the administrative ladder just doesn't happen.  Therefore this carbon blob ensures that work ends at quittin' time.  No promotions to fret about, so go home and see the family.  Then the baby gets handed off like an adorable, little rugby ball so the better half can go to work.  Just lucky this arrangement works, in light of the daycare situation.  Really, wouldn't have it any other way.  Toss that baby over here, would you kindly?

Ye Cavorting, Two-Headed Beastie

Now that the baby of the house is a whopping three months old (and a truly whopping six kilos plus), sorties in the baby carrier are a regular occurrence.  Trips to the store, trips to get take-away parent-kibble, and trips just cavorting hither, thither, and yon.

Get some interesting looks about town.  For one thing, a father alone with a child remains a somewhat unusual sight in Japan.  Gender roles are highly polarized hereabouts.  Women are expected to quit working when the first child comes along and embrace housewifery.  Then men spend all their time at work.  All their damn time.  According to OECD statistics, working fathers in Japan spend an average of twenty minutes per day with their children.  Women become, in essence, sole caregivers.  A by-product of this is that fathers are regarded as domestically incompetent.  This is changing... albeit slowly.

Another reason folks look: absurdly caucasian baby.  Granted, one finds plenty of caucasians here married to Japanese folk.  Those children, however, don't often resemble "eugenics babies" from a 1920s county fair in Midwestern America.  Make no mistake, got nothing but love for the little guy.  Still, in this neck of the woods, his blue-eyed blondness borders on ridiculous.  Some folks go utterly agog over the little Ollie-ball when he opens those sapphire peepers.  Can understand their feelings.

Side note: constantly singing to the little bologna loaf during the walks.  Current favorites: "Angel Band" and "The Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia."  With the cooler weather, often go forth wearing a sweatshirt over the baby carrier.  Upside: can zip the sweatshirt up over the baby for warmth.  Downside: the sweatshirt renders the harness invisible to anyone walking behind.  Thus, folk to the fore see a guy rocking and singing to a baby.  That gets a pretty positive reception: a lot of "kawaii!" and such.  Folk to aft see a guy, apparently, dancing around and singing to his own damn self.  That doesn't do so well in the polls.

Bologna Loaf.

Well, there's a baby in the house!  赤ちゃんだよ。

Bless the little bologna loaf.  That, by the by, is one of many great things from Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes.  In one strip, Calvin's father quips: "I knew we'd made a mistake the minute I saw that little bologna loaf in the hospital bassinet."  Mind you, this baby is no mistake.  Quite the contrary.  It's just that referring to a human child as a "bologna loaf" is pretty goddamn funny.  Didn't fully understand the significance of the statement prior to seeing a newborn, caucasian infant nekkid in the aforementioned hospital bassinet.  It's an apt description.

Speaking of apt descriptions, there are many great words in Japanese.  One such is 親バカ.  It refers to parents utterly agog over their own child and that child's perceived capability, intelligence, excretion prowess, looks, or what-not.  The term literally means parent fool.  Never really understood the term until now.  It's definitely an apt description.  Baby is barely a month old, and all the handheld electronics in the house are already inundated with pictures of him widdle face.

But that aside, the summer is nigh over.  Thus, vacation is over.  This week both these fool parents go back to work.  Have some trepidation about working full time and caring for an infant, but it can't be helped... and nothing will do but to do it.  しょうがないだな〜。頑張ろう。

The little guy is worth it.  And then some.  Bless the little bologna loaf.

Cavorting Beasties...

Walking by the river t'other evening, the twilight disclosed all manner of plastic bags floating by in the water.  Seeing crap drifting downriver (not literal crap, mind you) is not unusual.  Mostly the usual suspects: the aforementioned plastic bags, empty food containers, wood chips, bottles and cans, and clap your hands.

Despite this, even by the time it empties into Tokyo Bay, Sumida River merely looks unsightly compared to some rivers elsewhere.  The Mississippi is pretty funky when it gets to Louisiana... and not Bootsy Collins funky, either.  Glow-in-the-dark, scratch-and-sniff biohazard funky.  とにかく、隅田川で泳ぐつもりない。

But back to the Sumida: having an eyeful of a bunch of discarded plastic bags of an evening... saw one of them twitch.  Paused to rub the peepers.  Looked again and found that all of the plastic bags were intermittently moving or pulsating or undulating.  Ew... hate that last word.  Of course these were not plastic bags, but jellyfish.  (Probably aurelia aurita to be precise).

Everything has its season, of course.  When jellyfish appear in large quantities, scientists refer to it as a "bloom".  Jellyfish blooms present a problem here and there.  The phenomenon can have disastrous effects for some.  A bloom of Nomura's jellyfish or 越前水母 (エチゼンクラゲ) managed to capsize a fishing trawler when a group (school? wiggle? flotilla? jar? dunno...) of them ended up in the boat's net.  Surprised?  It's less surprising upon learning this critter can grow to two meters in diameter with a mass of two hundred kilos.  Zoiks.

Anyway these otherworldly blobs are mighty interesting.  Wikipedia ho!
この不思議な塊は興味深いだな。ウィキペディアに行こう！

Status updaticus: a group of jellyfish is most precisely referred to as a "smack".

What the hell?  Who makes this stuff up?

Sheepskin Collection.

Life has proffered various bedevilments over the years.  C'est la vie.  Some of the more amusing (and predictable) include: unrequited love, smoking cessation, forays into the depths of madness, fishhook inadvertently stuck in hand, excessive alcohol consumption, and arguments with all and sundry.  In retrospect, however, few of life's bedevilments have proven more consistently annoying than post-secondary education.

After several stabs at college, finally snagged a BA (which was BS, really) in East Asian Studies.  Spent six semesters studying Chinese only to be fully unable to speak it in ordinary conversation.  Well, whatever.  Went to Japan, instead.

The acquisition of the BA led to a solemn pledge never to set foot in a university again... except maybe to use the toilet.  That vow, uttered in earnest before the dear and fluffy lord and at least two fellow meat bags, held up for exactly three years.  Then, it was off to grad school!

Contrary to expectations, grad school was actually pretty damned interesting.  Learned some genuinely useful shit.  Met some genuinely interesting folks.  Also met a few dispicable chowderheads.  Mostly interesting folks.  Became painfully aware, though, how unsuitable the life of an academia nut is (at least for this carbon blob).  While out at a restaurant with fellow grad students, one smarmy, pedantic little troll started blathering about going right on to get a doctorate.  Immediately made a solemn vow before the dear and fluffy lord not to pursue any additional, additional schooling.  Just can't do it.  Gold stars on the fridge to those who can do it.  Frankly, would rather use a hedgehog in lieu of toilet paper than get the third degree.

And speaking of paper: in the way back when, diplomas were printed on parchment, vellum, or sheepskin rather than paper.  Some people still refer to diplomas as sheepskins.  The practice continued here and there as a decadence.  One of the last places in the United States of America to confer actual sheepskin diplomas was Rice University in Houston, Texas.  They quit doing so in 2012, citing cost and handling problems.  Figures.  Electric lights made candles pretty goddamned expensive.  Works that way for many things.

At any rate, got an official letter from the grad school t'other  day saying that all the criteria for the masters program have been fulfilled.  Iz grajuit.  For realz.  This diploma will be made from paper, and not snipped from ovine hindquarters.

That said, shall now make (yet) another pledge before the dear and fluffy lord and all who read this blog: this meat bag is done collecting sheepskins.